New Railways app to aid booking unreserved, platform tickets

New Delhi: The Indian Railways on Friday launched facilities for booking of paperless unreserved tickets as well as platform tickets to cut queues at reservation counters.

Most of the new facilities are aimed at the Mumbai suburban sections to begin with where 75 lakh passengers use the local train services to commute.

The new services are in tune with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Digital India’ mission and seek to help passengers save time by booking tickets right at their home before traveling, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu said as he launched the IT-enabled passenger services here.

The paperless platform ticket programme would cover the major sections in the Mumbai suburban sections, as well as New Delhi and Hazrat Nizamuddin stations here.

The minister also launched paperless season tickets on suburban sections of the Western Railway, Central Railway and between New Delhi and Palwal section of the Northern Railway.

Currency coin-cum-card-operated automatic ticket-vending machines at various suburban stations on the Central Railway and Western Railway were also launched on the occasion.

A Google logo is displayed at the entrance to the internet based company's offices in Toronto. VOA

Google has deleted 29 malicious “beauty camera” apps that were sharing pornographic content and forwarding users, particularly in India, to phishing websites to steal their information.

Some of these Android apps have been downloaded millions of times and a large number of the download counts originated from Asia — particularly in India, said a report from US-based cyber security firm Trend Micro.

The apps have now been removed by Google from the Play Store.

“A user downloading one of these apps will not immediately suspect that there is anything amiss, until they decide to delete the app,” said Trend Micro.

The app will push several full screen ads when users unlock their devices, including malicious ads (such as fraudulent content and pornography) that will pop up via the user’s browser.

The Google logo is seen at a start-up campus in Paris, France, Feb. 15, 2018. VOA

“During our analysis, we found a paid online pornography player that was downloaded when clicking the pop up,” the report added.

None of these apps gave any indication that they were the ones behind the ads, thus users might find it difficult to determine where they’re coming from.

Some of these apps redirected to phishing websites that asked the user for personal information, such as addresses and phone numbers.

“For example, the package com.beauty.camera.project.cloud will create a shortcut after being launched. However, it will hide its icon from the application list, making it more difficult for users to uninstall the app since they will be unable to drag and delete it,” Trend Micro noted.

Furthermore, the camera apps used packers to prevent them from being analysed. (IANS)